Downlaodpirate -

Mira looked at her crew—exhausted, scared, but alive. Then at the open starfield beyond the viewport.

Sarya laughed, a dry, cracked sound. "Kid, you don't ask a pirate for passage. You ask for a fight." She nodded toward the ICF cruiser that had just dropped out of FTL, its cannons already glowing. "And here it comes." downlaodpirate

The two ships docked with a hiss of equalizing pressure. Sarya boarded the Reprisal , her coat lined with optical cables and her right arm replaced with a multi-tool that hummed with processing power. She was older than the holos suggested, with grey-streaked hair and eyes that had seen too much. Mira looked at her crew—exhausted, scared, but alive

When the ICF ship limped away, Sarya turned to Mira. "You have two choices. Join us, or take a shuttle to the nearest colony and live quiet." "Kid, you don't ask a pirate for passage

The USS Reprisal had been adrift for three cycles. Its crew of twelve, led by Captain Mira Velez, survived on recycled protein paste and the static hiss of a dead comms array. Their crime? Downloading a forbidden database of pre-Collapse terraforming codes—a treasure the Interstellar Copyright Federation (ICF) called "piracy."

"You have the codes," Sarya said. Not a question.

"And the terraforming codes?"